The European Union consists of 28 member states. Each member state is party to the founding treaties of the union and thereby subject to the privileges and obligations of membership. Unlike members of most international organisations, the member states of the EU are subjected to binding laws in exchange for representation within the common legislative and judicial institutions. Member states must agree unanimously for the EU to adopt policies concerning defence and foreign policy. Subsidiarity is a founding principle of the EU. In 1957, six core states founded the European Economic Community; the remaining states have acceded in subsequent enlargements. On 1 July 2013, Croatia became the newest member state of the EU. To accede, a state must fulfill the economic and political requirements known as the Copenhagen criteria, which require a candidate to have a democratic, free-market government together with the corresponding freedoms and institutions, respect for the rule of law. Enlargement of the Union is contingent upon the consent of all existing members and the candidate's adoption of the existing body of EU law, known as the acquis communautaire.

There is disparity in the size and political system of member states, but all have de jure equal rights. In practice, certain states are more influential than others. While in some areas majority voting takes place where larger states have more votes than smaller ones, smaller states have disproportional representation compared to their population. No member state has withdrawn or been suspended from the EU, though some dependent territories or semi-autonomous areas have left. In June 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum on membership of the EU, resulting in 51.89% of votes cast, being in favour of leaving. The United Kingdom government invoked Article 50 on 29 March 2017 to formally initiate the withdrawal process. Notes According to the Copenhagen criteria, membership of the European Union is open to any European country, a stable, free-market liberal democracy that respects the rule of law and human rights. Furthermore, it has to be willing to accept all the obligations of membership, such as adopting all agreed law and switching to the euro.

To join the European Union, it is required for all member states to agree. In addition to enlargement by adding new countries, the EU can expand by having territories of member states, which are outside the EU, integrate more or by a territory of a member state which had seceded and rejoined. Enlargement is, has been, a principal feature of the Union's political landscape; the EU's predecessors were founded by the "Inner Six", those countries willing to forge ahead with the Community while others remained skeptical. It was only a decade before the first countries changed their policy and attempted to join the Union, which led to the first skepticism of enlargement. French President Charles de Gaulle feared British membership would be an American Trojan horse and vetoed its application, it was only after de Gaulle left office and a 12-hour talk by British Prime MinisterEdward Heath and French PresidentGeorges Pompidou took place that the United Kingdom's third application succeeded in 1970.

Applying in 1969 were the United Kingdom, Ireland and Norway. Norway, declined to accept the invitation to become a member when the electorate voted against it, leaving just the UK, Denmark to join, but despite the setbacks, the withdrawal of Greenland from Denmark's membership in 1985, three more countries joined the Communities before the end of the Cold War. In 1987, the geographical extent of the project was tested when Morocco applied, was rejected as it was not considered a European country; the year 1990 saw the Cold War drawing to a close, East Germany was welcomed into the Community as part of a reunited Germany. Shortly thereafter, the neutral countries of Austria and Sweden acceded to the newly renamed European Union, though Switzerland, which applied in 1992, froze its application due to opposition from voters while Norway, which had applied once more, had its voters reject membership again in 1994. Meanwhile, the members of the former Eastern Bloc and Yugoslavia were all starting to move towards EU membership.

In 2010, she led the Parliament’s negotiations the directive on patients' rights in cross-border healthcare. In 2016, Grossetête joined the Committee of Inquiry into Emission Measurements in the Automotive Sector, she served as member of the Temporary Committee on Climate Change, the Temporary Committee on Improving Safety at Sea and the Temporary Committee on Foot and Mouth Disease. She represented the Parliament at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. In addition to her committee assignments, Grossetête has been a member of the Parliament’s delegation for relations EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee since 2014, she served as a member of the delegations with the Gulf States, including Yemen, with Australia and New Zealand, with Cyprus, among others. From 2010 to 2011, she served as co-coordinator of the European Parliament’s High-Level Contact Group for Relations with the Turkish Cypriot Community in the Northern Part of the Island. Ahead of the 2014 European elections, Grossetête lost her spot at the top of the UMP party list for the southwest constituency to Renaud Muselier and instead became number two on the list.

After the elections, she was voted vice chairwoman of the European People's Party Group under the leadership of chairman Manfred Weber. In 2014, Grossetête proposed to establish a European Parliament Intergroup on Health for Citizens, including stakeholders such as the European Cancer Patients Association and the Organisation for European Cancer Institutes, she is a member of the MEP Heart Group, a group of parliamentarians who have an interest in promoting measures that will help reduce the burden of cardiovascular diseases. In 2015, Grossetête and Jacek Saryusz-Wolski guided the EPP’s working groups on economy and environment and foreign affairs in developing options for getting the EU to speak with a unified voice on external energy security matters. French Federation of Regional Parks, First Vice-Chairwoman Pilat Regional Natural Park, Chairwoman of the Administration Loire departmental air quality network, Chairwoman Following the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom’s European Union membership, Grossetête proposed that her hometown Lyon should be the new location for the London-based European Medicines Agency.

In 1905, during the Globe Congress, the two groups merged in the French Section of the Workers International. Leader of the parliamentary group and director of the party paper L'Humanité, Jaurès was its most influential figure; the party was hemmed in between the middle-class liberals of the Radical Party and the revolutionary syndicalists who dominated the trade unions. Furthermore, the goal to rally all the Socialists in one single party was reached: some elects refused to join the SFIO and created the Republican-Socialist Party, which supported socialist participation in liberal governments. Together with the Radicals, who wished to install laicism, the SFIO was a component of the Left Block without to sit in the government. In 1906, the General Confederation of Labour trade union claimed its independence from all political parties; the French socialists were anti-war, but following the assassination of Jaurès in 1914 they were unable to resist the wave of militarism which followed the outbreak of World War I.

They suffered a severe split over participation in the wartime government of national unity. In 1919 the anti-war socialists were defeated in elections. In 1920, during the Tours Congress, the majority and left wing of the party broke away and formed the French Section of the Communist International to join the Third International founded by Vladimir Lenin; the right wing, led by Léon Blum, kept the "old house" and remained in the SFIO. In 1924 and in 1932, the Socialists joined with the Radicals in the Coalition of the Left, but refused to join the non-Socialist governments led by the Radicals Édouard Herriot and Édouard Daladier; these governments failed because the Socialists and the Radicals could not agree on economic policy, because the Communists, following the policy laid down by the Soviet Union, refused to support governments presiding over capitalist economies. The question of the possibility of a government participation with Radicals caused the split of "neosocialists" at the beginning of the 1930s.

They merged with the Republican-Socialist Party in the Socialist Republican Union. In 1934, the Communists changed their line, the four left-wing parties came together in the Popular Front, which won the 1936 elections and brought Blum to power as France's first SFIO Prime Minister. Indeed, for the first time in its history, the SFIO obtained more votes and seats than the Ra

Since the 1980s, the political groups of the parliamentary right have joined forces around the values of economic liberalism and the building of Europe. Their rivalries had contributed to their defeat in the 1988 legislative elections. Before the 1993 legislative election, the GaullistRally for the Republic and the centristUnion for French Democracy formed an electoral alliance, the Union for France. However, in the 1995 presidential campaign they were both divided between followers of Jacques Chirac, elected, supporters of Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. After their defeat in the 1997 legislative election, the RPR and UDF created the Alliance for France in order to coordinate the actions of their parliamentary groups. Before the 2002 presidential campaign, the supporters of President Jacques Chirac, divided in three centre-right parliamentary parties, founded an association named Union on the Move. After Chirac's re-election, in order to contest the legislative election jointly, the Union for the Presidential Majority was created.

It was as such established as a permanent organisation. The UMP was the merger of the Gaullist-conservative Rally for the Republic, the conservative-liberal party Liberal Democracy, a sizeable portion of the Union for French Democracy, more the UDF's Christian Democrats, the Radical Party and the centrist Popular Party for French Democracy. In the UMP four major French political families were thus represented: Gaullism, Christian democracy and radicalism. Chirac's close ally Alain Juppé became the party's first president at the party's founding congress at the Bourget in November 2002. Juppé won 79.42% of the vote, defeating Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the leader of the party's EuroscepticArise the Republic faction, three other candidates. During the party's earlier years, it was marked by tensions and rivalries between Juppé and other chiraquiens and supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy, the then-Minister of the Interior. In the 2004 regional elections the UMP suffered a heavy blow, winning the presidencies of only 2 out of 22 regions in metropolitan France and only half of the departments in the simultaneous 2004 cantonal elections.

In the 2004 European Parliament election on 13 June 2004, the UMP suffered another heavy blow, winning 16.6% of the vote, far behind the Socialist Party, only 16 seats. Juppé resigned the party's presidency on 15 July 2004 after being found guilty in a corruption scandal in January of the same year. Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would take over the presidency of the UMP and resign his position as finance minister, ending months of speculation. On 28 November 2004, Sarkozy was elected to the party's presidency with 85.09% of the votes against 9.1% for Dupont-Aignan and 5.82% for Christine Boutin, the leader of the UMP's social conservatives. Having gained control of what had been Chirac's party, Sarkozy focused the party machinery and his energies on the 2007 presidential election; the failure of the referendum on the European Constitution on 25 May 2005 led to the fall of the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin and to the formation of a new cabinet, presided by another UMP politician, Dominique de Villepin.

However, during this time, the UMP under Sarkozy gained a record number of new members and rejuvenated itself in preparation of the 2007 election. On 14 January 2007, Sarkozy was nominated unopposed as the UMP's presidential candidate for the 2007 election. On the issues, the party under Sarkozy publicly disapproved of Turkey's proposed membership in the European Union, which Chirac had endorsed several times publicly, took a more right-wing position. On 22 April 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy won the plurality of votes in the first round of the 2007 presidential election. On 6 May he faced the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal in the second round and won, taking 53.06% of the vote. As a consequence, he resigned from the presidency of the UMP on 14 May 2007, two days before becoming President of the French Republic. François Fillon was appointed Prime Minister. On 17 June 2007, at a

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Elections to the European Parliament were held between 10 and 13 June 2004 in the 25 member states of the European Union, using varying election days according to local custom. The European Parliamental parties could not be voted for, but elected national parties aggregated in European Parliamental …

graph showing verticaly the proportion of members by country, and horizontaly the proportion of Members by parliamentary group for each country. 2004-2009 term.

Voting in the election, in the Netherlands

A poster for the European Parliament election 2004 in Italy, showing party lists

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